Monthly Archives: January 2011

The unlocked iPhone 4 has been long rumored to be on its way to Verizon. Of course, this took a lot longer than most expected, but now that is official we have some time to go ahead and take a look back at the history of the deal and how it finally came together. We know that both companies had discussed the move over the last few years, but because the newest iPhone’s did not live up to expectations of Verizon, there was no rush to keep the deal in place.

The deal first came together at the end of last year and was put together by Verizon President Lowell McAdam and Apple COO Tim Cook. Both of them had worked through the specifics of the deal over the course of a few weeks leading up to it. The commercial aspect of the deal reportedly only took about one day to finalize. The biggest issue between the two companies was releasing an iPhone version that would run on the Verizon network. Apple also wanted Verizon to put some towers at the Apple HQ building so that they could monitor signal strength and also look for reliability issues. That reportedly hung up the deal for quite some time.

As a result of the most recent deal, both of the companies have agreed to share their knowledge regarding updates with both companies so that they can better work together to bring the consumer base devices that they truly want and are looking for. Verizon will convey their network plans to Apple so that they can better suit their devices for the Verizon network, and Apple will let them know ahead of time about upcoming device plans so that Verizon can prepare as well. Verizon also had to agree to not put their logo on the iPhone 4 unlocked device when it was released. The sales are going to be through the roof, that much is known.

After the country called for RIM to filter the adult content that was being shown to unlocked BlackBerry Phone users in Indonesia, it looks as though they are going to have to buckle and give into their demands. The company has reportedly agreed to filter pornographic content on BlackBerry’s in India as a result of the government’s request that was made. This is not the first time that the company has had to accommodate requests from the government, but is the first time that they have agreed to filter the content that is given to their users. Apparently they would rather filter the content then have the BlackBerry be banned in the country.

They are working with the government to put the filter in place as promptly as possible, they said in a recent statement. The filtering solution will keep millions of Indonesian users from accessing the adult content. The fact that they asked Research In Motion to filter the content really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise to anyone. They first instituted an anti-pornographic material law in 2008 that filtered a lot of the internet content that was available at the time.

RIM really had no choice and was forced to give into their demands. Indonesia has previously asked the company to move some of its servers, which are currently located in Canada, to Indonesia so that they could keep a closer eye on the content that their citizens were looking at through their mobile devices. Working with governments to filter content is an increasing trend in the mobile industry, and this is one of many deals that may come into place in the future. It will be interesting to see if other filters are put into place as well in the future in other countries. RIM has made it clear that they are willing to work with governments on the issue.

The Unlocked Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant is a device that has been highly successful for Samsung, so it would be a bit naive of them not to release an updated version of the smart phone. It, at this point, is a worldwide smart device that has been able to sell more than ten million units since it was released just over six months ago. Samsung also recently announced the Infuse 4G, which will be a US-only offering.

Now, the President of Samsung Mobile, JK Shin, has announced that the Galaxy S device will be receiving an updated release in February that will run on the new Gingerbread operating system and will also feature a dual-core operating system. This is great news for fans of the original Galaxy S, which ran very smoothly and was met with rave reviews from the mobile community. The dual-core addition to the device should make it extremely fast and will allow them to expand the number of apps and functionality available for the phone. So far they have not announced if the dual-core processor will be Tegra 2 or Orion.

The phone will also utilize the Super AMOLED Plus display technology that most fans got their first look at during the Consumer Electronics Show last week. Along with the announcement of the Galaxy S successor, Samsung announced they would be releasing plans for their Galaxy Tab tablet line for the upcoming year. You can bet that their new Super AMOLED Plus display technology will be included in the announcement, so you might want to hold off on that new tablet until you see what the Galaxy Tab unlocked is going to be able to offer. Samsung’s new display technology was met by amazing reviews at the Consumer Electronics Show, and it is nice to see that they are quickly adding it to some of their most popular devices in a re-release and update.

Information is pointing to Nokia offering their E6-00 smart device including an 8 megapixel camera and a keypad, to be announced in February at MWC in February. So far, there is no concrete evidence to suggest that the rumor is true. There is no leaked picture of the device, and all we have to go off of so far is just a render of the device.

However, an XML file was found on the Nokia website that suggests that the device will run on a CGA display with 640 x 480 resolution display, complete with WiFi, HSDPA and will also run on an ARM processor on the Symbian operating system. You can bet that it will be at least Symbian^3 or a newer version of the operating system.

The Unlocked Nokia phone ( E6-00 ) is also likely going to boast an eight megapixel camera that comes complete with LED flash and a full QWERTY keyboard for optimal communication. Some experts have also suggested that the newest version could be slightly larger than the Nokia E5, which was pretty small.

Fans are looking forward to an official announcement, since all there is to go off right now is hearsay and some information that was scraped from the Nokia website via an XML file. Although this information usually turns out to be true, who knows when the XML file was originally created and what changes they have made to their plans.

It will be interesting to see if the information that has been found turns out to be true. It will likely be formally introduced during the MWC in February in Barcelona, where those that opted out of making announcements during the Consumer Electronics Show will be announcing their newest technology and smart devices. Nokia usually stays fairly quiet about these things until an official announcement is made, so do not expect anything right away.

With the unlocked iPhone 4 officially finally being released on the Verizon network, a network that is superior to that of the AT&T network, which has received a lot of negative attention regarding dropped calls in recent years, many are wondering how they can get out of their contract with AT&T and head over to the greener pastures provided by Verizon.

The contract with AT&T can be a bit complicated due to some of the contract charges that have been implemented over the course of the last few years. It can be sort of hard to get an idea of how much it would cost to leave the network. However, the information is out there and if you are serious about jumping ship.

Keep in mind that you should not call up your current carrier and cancel if you decide to make the switch. This will often result in you losing your phone number. Instead, try calling up your new network and having them assist you throughout the process. This will help you to keep your current number.

If you are looking to figure out the exact cost, start by taking a look at this web page; http://developer.wolframalpha.com/widgets/gallery/view.jsp?id=e1241d1b9692c1e9f4ebbf6896f0e33e. This was put together to help you to find out the exact amount that you will pay when you break your contract with AT&T. Keep in mind that if you bought an iPhone 4 unlocked after June 1st, you will have to pay some additional fees that were implemented at that time. Although making the move is expensive, most believe that moving to a more reliable network will be worth it in the long run. The Verizon iPhone 4 is coming on February 10th to Verizon, leaving users with just a few weeks to make the switch to acquire the highly popular device.

One rumor from the past few weeks in the cell phone industry was that the Unlocked Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 successor was in development after photos of the device surfaced in China. Now, it appears that a second photo of the rumored device has leaked online. This time, the phone is not on so it can be a little hard to tell if it is a knock off or a fake. If it is, it is a very high quality knock off. The keyboard looks very spacious, the device does have the full “Sony Ericsson” and “XPERIA” branding, and looks to be very high quality.

Of course, all of this is hard to confirm without being able to see what it looks like with the screen on. The X10 Mini Pro, as it has been unofficially dubbed would make an excellent addition to the already impressive Sony Ericsson lineup of smart mobile devices. Users would be ecstatic to get their hands on a smaller version of the wildly popular Sony Ericsson X10, as the company probably would have addressed some of the more major issues that were seen with the X10.

The phone will reportedly be very high powered, although no exact figures have been confirmed by the company at this time. In fact, they have not even announced that the phone is in the development stages so you should wait for an official announcement before you mark a release date down on your calendar. Hopefully the rumors of a high powered processor are true. You can bet that the Xperia X10 Mini Pro unlocked would at least see some improvements over the specs that were offered with the original phone. It will be interesting to see when they announce its development, and also how well it is received by users.

ViewSonic announced their newest smart phone on Thursday. The new unlocked cell phone, the Viewpad 4, will be added to their line of great ViewPad phones. Currently, there is already the ViewPad 7 and 10 tablets that have gained quite a bit of attention in recent months. The ViewPad 4, like the previous models in the line, will be a tablet but will have smart phone functionality as well.

The ViewPad 4 will have a 4.1 inch WVGA display, as well as a 1 GHz processor from Snapdragon. It will be able to record high quality 720p HD video and will also feature playback support. Along with an HDMI out port, a feature that has become the highlight of many new phone announcements and a 5 megapixel camera, the Viewpad 4 is a device that is loaded with excellent features.

It is expected to be released sometime in the second or third quarter of 2011. So far, no pricing information has been released. They did announce that the carriers would be responsible for the pricing of the device, although the company did not name which carriers those might be.

This addition to their ViewPad line will give consumers a cheaper option with a smaller screen if they do not want to have to deal with the higher priced models in the ViewPad line. The fact that the device will have full cellular support is another huge draw and should garner them a lot of viewers. Although it is considered to be a tablet, the ViewPad 4 is more the size of a large smart phone, complete with all of the features that you would expect a cellular device to have. It will run on the Android 2.2 Froyo software, an operating system that many tablets that were announced during the Consumer Electronics Show will be running on.

The Playstation Phone, also known as the Unlocked Sony Ericsson (XPERIA Play), has been seen in a number of videos over the course of the last few months. Now, another video of the highly anticipated phone has surfaced online, showing an individual playing BioHazard 2. The early impressions of the phone are pretty sweet. Although some have argued that it appears to be underpowered for a gaming phone after frame rate tests suggested that it put out a lower frame rate than the iPhone and other top of the line smart phones, the game that was played in the video looks great, and appeared to run very smoothly.

The hardware that the phone features has not been released yet, but sources have confirmed that the company is looking into bulking up the phone to make it more powerful. In the video, the games that the user was planning had to be loaded through an app called ROM buddy, which allows you to play ROMs on Android devices.

Even though the games were not originally designed for the XPERIA Play device, they still looked very good and were responsive to the phones controls. It is surprising that Sony is the first company to target gamers with a smart phone release that comes complete with a controller. Although gaming has been very popular on phones like the iPhone 4 unlocked and popular Android offerings, the genre’s of games suffered from a lack of a comprehensive control. Controlling a first person shooter on a touch screen can be very difficult, and the XPERIA Play should open up a variety of different types of games to users. Although no information regarding price or release dates has been put out by Sony at this time, it appears that the development of the phone is going into overdrive, especially with all of the unofficial videos showing its use out there.

Unlocked HTC phone has announced the HTC Evo Shift 4G in an attempt to build upon the popularity of the EVO 4G phone that was released during the summer of 2010. Although the Evo Shift 4G will not be as feature loaded as the Evo 4G, the company placed upgrades in all of the right places to ensure that they were able to deliver a superior product to their users. The release shouldn’t be the media extravaganza that the Evo 4G was, but will still garner a lot of attention.

The phone will feature an 800 MGz Qualcomm CPU. This is the same processor that is found in other popular phones including the G2 and My Touch. The screen is a bit smaller than most would expect at 3.6 inches, but offers a beautiful 800 x 480 LCD screen that delivers beautiful images. The device will run on the Android 2.2 operating system, which has easily been the most popular among the new announcements at the Consumer Electronic Show this year.

The Shift 4G will utilize WiMAX 4G to run smoothly on Sprints network, and should be among the fastest phones that HTC has to offer. The design of the phone is fairly thick and has been compared to the Unlocked Motorola Droid 2, recently released by Verizon. The keyboard as a great feels to it and is very easy to use.

It is powerful enough to handle Android 2.2 without any issues and runs smooth from one screen to another. We have noticed no lag when moving between apps and screens and the current loading time when you start the phone is 43 seconds.

The Evo Shift 4G will be one of the best phones that HTC has to offer this year, and is a marked upgrade over previous versions of the phone. It will be interesting to see how well the phone is received by current users of the Shift. HTC made changes in all of the right areas to bring users an upgraded experience with a solid cell device.

LG has set their sights high for 2011. Currently, they are the third largest device manufacturer in the world, only behind Unlocked Nokia Phone and Samsung, but that hasn’t stopped them from making an attempt to get to the top spot. They were able to ship out more than seven million smart devices in 2010, and they are looking to more than quadruple that number with their various offerings in 2011. The target number that they outlined during a press event was 30 million, a huge leap from the number of smart devices that they were able to ship last year.

The Mobile Vice President of the Company, Ma Chang-Min said that they were looking to improve the number of high quality smart devices that they were offering this year, and also release phones for budget minded consumers that are not looking to invest in the latest technology.

LG unlocked phone looks to grow the number of phones that they offer as well as the features that are encompassed with these phones. With a lot of attention being placed on upcoming phones like the Optimus Black, which has been highly anticipated and well reviewed, it looks as if the company is getting off on the right foot this time around.

Although they have a long way to go to meet the 30 million mark that Chang-Min announced today, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if they were able to hit it. The number of phones that the company has on tap for 2011 is a huge list, and with the quality that they provide you can expect a few of them to take off in popularity fairly quickly. It remains to be seen if they will hit their 30 million mark, but at least they are setting their sights high and continually trying to gain ground in the ever-changing mobile market.